Emotional Intelligence Creates Sales Results

Problem: Bill had been in a selling slump for months. As a result of his slump he seemed to always be irritated and pessimistic when he was approached with his weekly coaching and pipeline debriefs. Sue sensed the situation was caused by a particular sales competency which was not mastered. Looking over Bill's Objective Management Group assessment she was able to isolate the culprit. Bill was suffering from a significant gap in doing the behaviors needed to master the selling competency called, "Controls Emotions." Sue was faced with a huge dilemma. If she approached Bill with what she knew the problem was, Bill would become excited, he would over analyze and he would take the coaching for improvement personally and become very defensive.

Diagnosis: Sue decided the best way to inform Bill without him becoming defensive would be to use his Objective Management Group assessment as the starting point of the conversation. By reading his report Bill could objectively read about his weakness in this competency and begin an action plan to improve the behaviors associated with the competency. Next Sue went to Target Training International. Here is where Sue printed out the five things that are measured regarding Emotional Intelligence. The five areas are; self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills. Sue asked Bill to then look over the remaining 21 sales competencies from the Objective Management report and link the 15 sales competencies directly impacted by having a gap like he has in this one sales competency titled "Controls Emotions". To make this fun, Sue promised Bill a steak dinner if he could match all 15. Bill was successful in linking 9 of the 15 sales competencies. At this point Sue sensed Bill’s curiosity to know all 15 so she shared the following information with Bill:

• By mastering the Sales Competency called Emotional Intelligence you can improve these specific Sales Competencies; Goals, Has a Positive Attitude, Takes Responsibility, Strong Self Confidence, Does Not Need for Approval, Recovers From Rejection, , Attitude, Comfortable Talking About Money, Supportive Buy Cycle, Reaches Decision Makers, Effective Listening & Questioning, Uncovers Actual Budgets, Early Bonding & Rapport, Uncovers Actual Budgets, Discovering Why Prospects Buy, Qualifies Quotes & Proposals and Gets Commitments & Decisions.

Prescription: Bill was starting to understand the importance of wisdom which is usually reserved for those of us with significant experience relative to how old we are. He was curious how he was going to overcome his gap in Controlling Emotions and supercharge his own wisdom. Sue gave Bill three assignments. First she signed him up for the blended learning course module on Emotional Discipline from My Professional Development and the Gulas Group. Next she sent a link to Bill to participate in a Target Training Assessment to measure the five areas of Emotional Intelligence. The last assignment was for Bill to read the book titled, "Selling with Emotional Intelligence" by Mitch Anthony. The increase in sales results was incredible. Once Bill understood how his lack of self awareness plus the other four attributes of Emotional Intelligence was creating issues such as, rapidly establishing bonding and rapport to how he was handling rejection Bill’s pessimism went away. That pessimism was replaced with optimism. Bill was not completely aware of what he needed to do to improve his sales results and with unconditional commitment he was able to improve his sales results and get out of his slump in days.